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The Hollowing of Summit Diplomacy in a Socially Distanced World

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The Hollowing of Summit Diplomacy in a Socially Distanced World The Hague Journal of Diplomacy 15 (2020) 583-598 brill.com/hjd All That’s Lost: The Hollowing of Summit Diplomacy in a Socially Distanced World Tristen Naylor London School of Economics, London, United Kingdom [email protected] Received: 15 June 2020; revised: 30 August 2020; accepted: 21 September 2020 Summary This essay considers the implications of virtual summits replacing in-person multilat- eral gatherings of political leaders. Focusing on the loss of physicality, it argues that two critical dimensions of summitry are eliminated in this shift: sublime governance and inter-moments. Drawing on illustrative examples from the Group of 20, it demon- strates that while moving online maintains the formal, procedural interactions around which summits are built, doing so loses these critical elements of summitry which render it a valuable and unique practice in within the overall institution of diplomacy. This move also undercuts the effects of these elements, in the immediate context of a particular summit and more broadly within the international system itself. The elimi- nation of summitry’s performative and interpersonal dimensions fundamentally ren- ders online meetings unable to achieve what in-person summits can. This has acute consequences in the immediate wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and also more gener- ally as diplomacy moves online. Keywords sublime governance – inter-moments – summits – performativity – practices – face-to-face interaction – diplomacy – psychology © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/1871191X-bja10041Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 11:53:45PM via free access 584 Naylor 1 Introduction On 26 March 2020, the Group of 20 (G20) held an online ‘virtual’ summit to discuss the COVID-19 pandemic and the global economic crisis it ushered in. Instead of world leaders standing shoulder to shoulder for the group’s annual family photo, the closest leaders got to one another was as pixelated images in tiny boxes on a screen — a far cry from the usual splendour and spectacle of a summit. Current measures to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 will not last forever; however, at a minimum, such online meetings will be the new normal in the near term, and will likely be standard practice in subsequent waves of this virus as well as those of any new pandemic threats lurking in the future. While it is too conjectural to declare the death of traditional summitry, recent months have nonetheless demonstrated how this diplomatic practice changes when social distancing is required, with the European Union, Group of 7 (G7), G20, Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, UN Security Council and World Health Assembly, among others, holding summits online in the wake of virus’s outbreak. What follows considers the implications of moving leaders’ summits online, even if only temporarily. The aim is not so much to analyse the characteristics and challenges specific to online meetings — these elements are documented elsewhere and are relatively intuitive, as anyone who has endured the frustra- tions of low bandwidth on Skype, Zoom or FaceTime knows.1 Furthermore, while recent experience offers clues for what ‘new normal’ summitry might be, the current context is too new and too dynamic to draw even provisional con- clusions about the character and form of future online summits beyond vague generalities or obvious suppositions. Rather, the focus here is on what is lost in the abandonment of traditional, in-person summits. The shift to online meetings eliminates the all-important physicality of summitry. While the vast majority of scholarly work on summits focuses on policy dimensions, the material, physical aspects of summitry are fundamen- tal to understanding their added value as a diplomatic practice in the manage- ment of international affairs and the governance of the globe.2 Indeed, it is the physical meeting of leaders in a specific time and place that renders a sum- mit more than just any another meeting.3 In contrast, diplomacy scholarship more generally has a long tradition of noting the importance of physicality and face-to-face meetings between political leaders, often drawing contrasts with 1 Heath 2020. 2 Adler and Pouliot 2011; Death 2011; Roche 2000. 3 Neumann 2013. The Hague Journal of DiplomacyDownloaded 15from ( 2020Brill.com09/24/2021) 583-598 11:53:45PM via free access The Hollowing of Summit Diplomacy 585 mediated interactions owing to technological innovations, whether telegraphs or tweets.4 This essay argues that online interaction between leaders removes two critical elements of summitry necessarily premised on physicality. First, summits function as instances of sublime governance, wherein the rituals and ceremonial practices of summitry constitute the meeting as an extraordinary break from normal politics.5 This in turn produces real, emergent effects on the international system, assembled leaders and government bureaucrats.6 Second, moving online eliminates the opportunities for inter-moments, un- structured happenings in which diplomacy can be practiced in between more formal, procedural events. Inter-moments are the domain of brush-bys, pull- asides and walk-and-talks — moments in which leaders can advance towards their foreign policy objectives in ways that would otherwise not be possible by other means or other channels. 2 Sublime Governance The ritualistic pageantry of leaders’ summits, marked by welcoming ceremo- nies, formal dinners and gala performances, is routinely treated as secondary to the ‘real’ business of a summit wherein leaders discuss and negotiate policy.7 Such a rationalist, typically liberal approach implies that there would be little consequence to the loss of the performative elements of summitry in a move to online meetings. These dimensions of summitry are epiphenomenal and whether discussions are held in person or online does not rationally alter the dynamics of a negotiation. This view, however, misses the significant, constitu- tive effects of performative dimensions of summitry. They are not irrelevant niceties or vestiges of a bygone era of diplomacy but are critical practices in the production of summits as sublime phenomena.8 The theatrical, performa- tive assemblage of summitry, in other words, is more than ‘mere aesthetics’.9 As Costas Constantinou, Iver Neumann and Fiona McConnell, among others, 4 For earlier accounts, see Nicolson [1939] 1963; Satow [1917] 2006. For more recent accounts, see Berridge 2015, 111-112; Murray 2015. 5 The author recalls Neumann’s 2006 characterisation of the three epistemes of ‘sublime diplo- macy’ — stimulating, if not overwhelming the senses, keeping ‘immanent terror away’ and its apparently infinite tasks. Summitry is sublime in all three ways. 6 Death 2011; Geertz 1980. 7 Bayne and Putnam 2000; Chasek 2001; Dunn 1996a; Haas 2002; Kaufmann 1989; Kirton 2013; Park 1996; Putnam 1988; Putnam and Bayne 1984; Schechter 2005. Exceptions include: Constantinou 1998; Death 2010, 2011. 8 Armstrong 1996; Constantinou 1996, 1998; Cohen 1987; Craggs 2014. 9 Neumann 2013, 152. The Hague Journal of Diplomacy 15 (2020) 583-598Downloaded from Brill.com09/24/2021 11:53:45PM via free access 586 Naylor argue, pomp and spectacle play essential roles in the production of a summit as a break from normal politics, elevating the event to the figurative heights of international diplomacy, and in so doing transforming its participants from mere political actors to the exalted status of ‘statesperson’.10 These elements are not substantively irrelevant to summitry such that there is no consequence to their absence. Rather, they play fundamental roles in ‘making’ the summit in the first place and imbuing it with meaning, thereby instilling authority and power within it and structuring incentives around it. As such, being without these elements online has substantive implications with respect to 1) the role and power of summits in international affairs, 2) the conduct of its participat- ing leaders and 3) the incentives for rank-and-file diplomats and bureaucrats. Most generally, stripped of ritualistic, performative elements, a summit’s aura is undermined, losing its extraordinary status in being reduced to just another meeting among others.11 Performative rituals constitute a summit as not just special, but exalted within the broader international system, bestowing an authority — if not also a legitimacy — to govern.12 The extraordinary status of a summit and its participants emerges from an assemblage of the practices and materials of summitry — from handshakes to photo ops, from flags to motorcades.13 Summits are breaks from regular order, wherein more powerful actors convene to make authoritative decisions, momentarily freed of the pretence of sover- eign equality within the international system. What is decided, declared and directed from the commanding heights of a summit, in turn, has effects on the international system and actors beyond the meeting.14 It is, in part, the drama- turgy of summitry that makes this possible in the first place.15 More than this, though, as Carl Death argues — building on the likes of Judith Butler, Michel Foucault and Clifford Geetz — the theatrical, performative dimensions of summitry are not solely means to political/policy ends; they themselves are in- stantiations of power, reifying ‘subjectivities, relationships, and world-views’.16 Indeed, for Jeffrey Alexander, ritualistic performances are especially critical in 10 Cohen 1987; Constantinou 1998, 24, 2016, 2018; McConnell 2018; Neumann 2013, 5; Sidaway 2001; Shimazu 2014, 232. 11 Neumann 2013, 151-154. Neumann makes a similar argument with respect to the institu- tion of diplomacy as a whole. 12 Constantinou 1996, 1998; Death 2010, 2011; Shimazu 2014. 13 Adler and Pouliot 2011. 14 Death 2010, 2011; Rose 1999. 15 Cohen 1987, 28-32. 16 Death 2011, 6. See also Barthes 1972; Butler 1990; Constantinou 1996; Foucault 1980; Geertz 1980; Hajer 2016. The Hague Journal of DiplomacyDownloaded 15from ( 2020Brill.com09/24/2021) 583-598 11:53:45PM via free access The Hollowing of Summit Diplomacy 587 the context of global governance because of the level of abstraction and degree of complexity involved in managing international society.
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